Why one minute? Let's go for it and make it one second. A typical miner can do 1 trillion hashes per second. That's plenty for a single block.

There is no reason to care what Satoshi would do. He is not in charge of Bitcoin. Nobody is in charge of Bitcoin and that is the way it is, and that is the way it should be.

In other words, you need someone to tell you what to do. You can't bear to be responsible for your own actions.

The maximum block size has nothing to do with exchanges. It makes no difference if an exchange accepts it or not, except that it will be out of business if miners switch to the bigger size and it doesn't.

On the broader topic:

Nobody is required to use Core in order to use Bitcoin. It is sad that so many people in the Bitcoin world who profess to be free-thinkers are ready and eager to submit to authority. It is even worse when these sheep insist that everyone must submit.

"Fork" has several meanings in this context:

1. On Github, a copy of software repository is called a "fork" of the original.
2. With open source software, anyone is able to make a copy of the software and modify it. The new software is called a "fork". Nearly all alt-coins are forks of Bitcoin.
3. The Bitcoin block chain is really a tree of blocks, but the branches are generally very short-lived. If a group of miners adds blocks to the block chain that are rejected by the other miners, then there will be two persistent branches and this is called a "fork".

Gavin's 20 MB max block size "fork" is a combination of all three. He is considering making a copy of Bitcoin Core on Github (#1 "fork"). Instead of limiting blocks to 1 MB, it will support a 20 MB block (#2 "fork"). As a result, if some miners use the original version and other miners use his version, then there will be a fork (#3 fork) in the block chain (because the 1 MB group rejects 20 MB blocks as invalid).

Cats and dogs living together!

Whatever. There are plenty of doomsday scenarios and none are very likely. You seem to think that every potential problem has no solution. That's just being ignorant.

It seems unwieldy to have each share represented by an address. For example, Apple has about 6 billion shares. Just the initial distribution of 6 billion shares would require more than 200 GB of space on the block chain.

I wouldn't read too much into those numbers. Here is what the fund's site says:

This is a 2014 poll. Why are people still answering it half-way through 2015?

The location of the relaying node is determined from sources such as http://www.iplocation.net/. If the location is unknown, then they use 0°, 0°

Faucets are a stupid way to make money. If you want a more effective way to make money that requires very little skill, try Mechanical Turk: https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome

You can get paid with Amazon credit, and you can convert that to bitcoins using Purse.io: https://purse.io/

No differences.

Check out purse.io. You can convert quickly and safely, and you can get better rates than 30%.

You aren't the first to wonder about those apparent contradictions. I don't think he ever clarified them.


Prior to WW2, something like 40% of the U.S. population worked on farms. Now, because of technology, it's more like 4%. We do not see 36% unemployment because people adapt. Many kinds of jobs will disappear in the future due to the advance of technology, and people will adapt.

In the U.S., the government has the authority to confiscate property used in a crime, but they don't have the ability to confiscate bitcoins unless they have the private keys.

There is no IP information in a transaction or in the block chain. That is a myth that is probably perpetuated by blockchain.info because they show the IP of the node that relayed the transaction to them, and it is mistakenly assumed to be the IP of the originator.

Its not that easy. Faster confirmations come at the cost of lower security.

For the next time, here are two tips:

1. Import the paper wallet directly into Mycelium instead of going through blockchain.info.
2. Confirmations are not instant. Plan ahead.

That's a common belief, but it is shortsighted and not a good explanation for the falling price. Sure, merchants usually sell the bitcoins they receive, shifting the supply curve and putting a downward pressure on the price.

But, you are ignoring the demand side. People buying with bitcoins have to buy the bitcoins, and that shifts the demand curve and puts an upward pressure on the price.

So, as Bitcoin adoption increases more merchants are selling bitcoins and more customers are buying bitcoins. The two cancel effectively each other out.

Your question doesn't make sense. You are asking why the value of a bitcoin is so high ($240/BTC), when 1 satoshi could represent one cent ($1,000,000/BTC).

You should probably find out what happens to your money when their business fails and they declare bankruptcy.